Can we impeach him now!?
Now that he has
admitted to breaking the law by circumventing the system and authorizing illegal wire-taps on Americans without warrant, can we please now impeach the bastard? I am continually shocked and amazed at how far the American people are willing to let this rich kid run rough-shod over the constitution. The republicans wanted to impeach Clinton for a sexual indiscretion. Isn’t starting a war under false pretenses, exposing our troops to unnecessary danger in Iraq while fighting a legitimate war in Afghanistan (remember that?) to get Bin Laden who we all know is in Pakistan now, protected by the Pakistani police, enough to go on?
Can’t they see how much damage he’s done to our nation? We’re in a very precarious position not only because of an (illegal?) war but because of massive national debt which we can thank him for as well. He’s refused to fire even one of his idiot cabinet even after a string of failures. Meanwhile, they all rake in the bucks (or potential future bucks) from connections to fat military contracts. I dare you to list one thing that either Cheney or Rumsfeld has gotten *right* since this debacle of a war began. Every single decision so far has been wrong, and has led to an erosion of our safety and our status in the world. Many Americans may think that since they live in the most powerful nation in the world, don’t need to consider the opinions of others in the world, but that’s incredibly short sighted.
I’m embarrassed by them all. It was strange to see Newt Gingrich intimate almost the same thing on Charlie Rose the other night too. I will never forgive Newt for his cowardly crusade against the honor of the presidency, but even he recognizes how pitifully misguided this administration is.
Original NYT article from Dec 16th that broke the story
Bruce Schneier on Security
Comment posted on 12-18-2005
An example of what I’m talking about here:
UMass Dartmouth senior visited by Feds after submitting a library request for Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book”. to complete a paper on Communism for a history class.
Comment posted on 12-19-2005
"Many legal experts, such as Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe, expressed doubts about the legality of the surveillance. Such a policy, Tribe said, is illegal "without congressional authorization" and even then would violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures."
USA TODAY 12-18-05
Comment posted on 12-19-2005
“The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters — one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people — are extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.”
Washington Post, Nov 2005
If you can’t see this for what it is: the New McCarthyism, then you are guilty of trading liberty for security - and for that you deserve neither as Ben Franklin once made clear.
Comment posted on 12-19-2005
Democracy Now! article - ‘An impeachable offense?’
“…There had been a case in 1972, when Nixon tried to do the same thing. Lenny Wineglass, a very fine lawyer, argued the case in District Court. Nixon claimed that you could, for domestic surveillance, that you had a right to use executive warrants, as he claimed, the permission of the President and the Attorney General. And he said that that was sufficient. This was at a time of civil unrest, according to him, 1971, 1972. There were some bombings within the United States. And he went out, and he tried to survey, surveillance people, eavesdropping, wiretapping without judicial warrants, without probable cause.
And the United States Supreme Court said no. The United States Supreme Court said you can’t do this. The United States Supreme Court said that the President does not have that kind of power within the Constitution. He has the power to protect the nation, but this goes beyond that. He can’t violate the Constitution. That’s exactly what’s happening now. And what’s going to happen is: You now have a different Supreme Court. You’re going to have Roberts, probably Alito, and my judgment is they’re going to uphold what Bush is doing, and in effect, they’re going to reverse, though not directly, the Nixon case. It’s a strategy to get past that Nixon case and to give the President the broadest powers that any President has ever had. ”
-Martin Garbus (quoted)
Comment posted on 1-7-2006
‘President Bush’s rationale for eavesdropping on Americans without warrants rests on questionable legal ground, and Congress does not appear to have given him the authority to order the surveillance, said a Congressional analysis released Friday.’ -
these quotes from a New York Times online article, Jan 7 2006 (free reg. required, etc.)
‘The analysis, by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress,…requested by several members of Congress, reached no bottom-line conclusions on the legality of the program, in part because it said so many details remained classified. But it raised numerous doubts about the power to bypass Congress in ordering such operations, saying the legal rationale “does not seem to be as well grounded” as the administration’s lawyers have argued.’
‘Thomas H. Kean, a Republican who was chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, weighed in for the first time in the debate. Mr. Kean said he counted himself among those who doubted the legality of the program. He said in an interview that the administration did not inform his commission about the program and that he wished it had.’